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Leni Zumas

Autor de Red Clocks

3+ Obras 1,305 Miembros 64 Reseñas 2 Preferidas

Sobre El Autor

Leni Zumas teaches creative writing at Hunter College.

Incluye el nombre: Loni Zumas

Obras de Leni Zumas

Red Clocks (2018) 1,121 copias
The Listeners (2012) 133 copias
Farewell Navigator: Stories (2008) 51 copias

Obras relacionadas

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Miembros

Debates

Red Clocks Group Read in January en 75 Books Challenge for 2022 (enero 2022)

Reseñas

I devoured this after midnight in a Newark hotel. Great and, as others have noted, a necessary story in this moment. Not a dystopian novel — currently we’re only one heartbeat away from this reality. My only disappointment? I don’t think we’re going to get the complete Minervudottir biography. Spin-off??
 
Denunciada
RachelGMB | 60 reseñas más. | Dec 27, 2023 |
Synopsis: The tale of 5 women struggling with different aspects of womanhood. This story is set in a world where laws are much more right leaning than present day America. It follows a woman in a historical setting who is an explorer, a woman going through fertility treatments, a unconventional healer, a teenager, and a struggling mother.

Rating
3 out of 5 stars

I expected to really love this book but unfortunately I didn't.

I thought the message of the book was interesting and the ideas presented were valuable but it is a very literary novel which made it semi inaccessible. The main character in each chapter is denoted by their role rather than a name. We only learn their names when other characters interact with them.

My favorite character was the one who was struggling with her fertility. I didn't really connect with the rest. I wasn't entirely sure what we were supposed to be learning from the explorer or the struggling mom. The healer was very odd. I assume she is meant to be neurodivergent but a few things about her character were really off putting to me. The teenager was the only other character I cared about.

I felt like the author had a lot to say about womanhood but I just felt like I wasn't getting a lot of her messaging.

I think this book could really work for people who are more used to literary works. This book could also create awesome discussions in a book group or class room. I just didn't enjoy it in my personal reading experience.
… (más)
 
Denunciada
authorjanebnight | 60 reseñas más. | Dec 18, 2023 |
Through the lives of four modern women and one forgotten explorer, Red Clocks examines what it means to be female in a patriarchal society, the struggle to control your own destiny as one, and the eternal accusations we face when we dare to breakaway from the social restrictions placed on us. This softly disturbing, near-future dystopia is so utterly contemporary in its feel and the single, devastating change to law so realistic that it leaves you unsettled as does the quiet sound in the night that you aren't quite sure you really heard but can't stop listening for.… (más)
 
Denunciada
Zoes_Human | 60 reseñas más. | Nov 14, 2023 |
Red Clocks follows the lives of four women: the biographer, the wife, the mender, and the daughter shortly after a constitutional amendment has passed that has made abortion and IVF illegal and is about to make adoption by a single parent illegal as well.

While Red Clocks presumably focuses on the current "hot button" issue of abortion, for me this book provides more of a retrospective on the many ways in which women have been relegated, in times past, to a role of "less than" in society. The characterization of one woman (the mender) as a "witch" and another (the wife) as an unhappy housewife I believe to be examples of how women have been trapped and persecuted in the past. The biographer struggles with an all consuming desire to have a child while writing a book about a female polar explorer who is again, limited by pre-defined gender roles. There's an irony to the biographer's desire to be a mother as she writes a book about a woman trying to shake off the traditional female role in favor of exploration and adventure.

It's also interesting to look at the tension between the women themselves. The women intersect in interesting ways, torn between their own desires, judgements, and experiences and empathy for their fellow women. The biographer wants a child and the daughter is going to bear one, but the biographer can't decide whether to support the daughter's desire to end her pregnancy (illegally) or beg her to permit the biographer to adopt the baby. The wife, saddled with two fairly typical children and a stifling marriage of her own, judges the biographer for taking every available avenue to become pregnant. The mender is falsely accused by her lover; herself an abused wife. .

For me, all of this interplay was very interesting and the dystopian premise was probably the weakest part. The subtleties of the story where the true nature of feminism is revealed made the book more meaningful. I loved the structure and the writing itself. I think there is an underlying message here that we women are oftentimes our own worst enemies and not as united in our collective feminist drives as we might think we are.

The ending of the book is beautifully done - - a capstone on writing that felt fresh to me:

"She wants more than one thing."

Does that not summarize the entire truth of the female human experience in the most simple possible way?
… (más)
 
Denunciada
Anita_Pomerantz | 60 reseñas más. | Mar 23, 2023 |

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Obras
3
También por
3
Miembros
1,305
Popularidad
#19,663
Valoración
½ 3.7
Reseñas
64
ISBNs
31
Idiomas
6
Favorito
2

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